The Past and Times of Yore: Dragon Age Origins revisited

 
Release Date: November 3rd, 2009
Genre: Role Playing
Publisher: Electronic Arts 
Developer: Bioware, Edge of Reality
Platform: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac OS X
Players: 1
Classification: M (Mature)

I recently had another go at Dragon Age Origins again, you may remember me mentioning the game in one of my first ever posts back in April 2011 where it was 90% Minecraft and before I formalized the reviews. I didn’t mention this in the post (I didn’t mention much actually but I did get a short way through the main campaign as a Mage and a reasonable way through as a Sword and Shield Warrior) but didn’t end up going forward due to all of the managing of following inventory and also trying to work out which follower likes what. Oddly enough I’ve had to deal with the same thing in SWTOR but funnily enough it’s been easier to manage. 

Character creation screen where you choose your origin

So basically I never did finish Dragon Age Origins though I wanted to have another go as I had so much fun doing the “origin stories” using various race and sex combinations to see how it changes the initial story. I especially liked the Human Noble, City Elf and Circle Mage stories as all of them had that Bioware touch of choice interaction and awkward/cheesy acting and dialogue which sometimes is reminiscent of a soap opera.

"My dear I have a confession to make"

 Human Noble Origin – You’re the son/daughter of the Lord of the Castle and help defend it during a betrayal.

Spoiler: The traitor is the dude on the right

City Elf Origin – You are a  downtrodden male/female City Elf who wakes up on your marriage day that gets broken up by some evil human lords intent on sexing Elf women. I’ll admit this one was the most striking as this is the first ever game where elves are a previously enslaved race.

This is an Elf wedding, you can see how they really are downtrodden.

 Circle Magi – You are a Mage of the Circle who undertakes the Fade ritual, you are under strict control by Templars but get involved in a scandal involving your “friend”

The Magi was probably my favorite "origin" you were under strict guard by Templars who were fearful of their power.

There are other origins of course including the Dalish Elves and Dwarves though I found those three to be the most fun, I enjoyed using female characters in this regard as they can lead to some funny moments especially when as a female Magi you can flirt with a Templar guard and embarrass your friend in front of his lover. 

These kind of experiences make me want to try this in other games such as SWTOR but you put a lot of time and effort into an MMO character and interact with a lot of others and I don’t know if I’d be ok with being hit on by guys and start a relationship with one. I will definitely play as a female the next time I play Saints Row IV as you spend quite a lot of time naked and there is this one party where you dress up as a stripper and have to quicktime a sexy dance and man doing that as a male character was ugh. Though Saints row is a bit different to MMO’s and serious RPG’s obviously as the “romance” is just casual sex.

Everyone's looking pretty calm for a bunch of girls who are supposedly going to get raped, this whole story was ripe for controversy in the general media.

But anyway, Dragon Age never kept me occupied for long, the character creation and interactivity were there it just didn’t hit the nail on the head for me to keep playing though I got a decent way through.  As fun as the origins are you always end up in the same place anyway after all of them so it’s true what Zero Punctuation said in his review that you’ll just keep playing the different starting missions of each race and I sort of have, it’s just to show how I love starting again in games. Dragon Age a stock standard Fantasy RPG but it’s good for a play if you like that sort of thing, come to think of it I have to try Dragon Age II and Inquisition.

JD

Our expressions say it all, this happens a lot in Dragon Age

My favorite place to be is the beginning.

The Past and Times of Yore: Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Let's get the hell outta here

Release Date: June 1st, 2006
Genre: First Person Shooter
Publisher: Valve Software

Developer: Valve Software
Platform: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac OS X, Linux
Players: 1
Classification: M (Mature)

Yes here it is, Half Life 2 Episode 1, oddly named title I know, it’s basically the first episode after the original game which I did a review of in the past. Episode 1 was actually meant to be called “Aftermath” but was changed to Episode 1 to support valve’s episodic structure. I obtained this game by purchasing the Orange Box which contained five games: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 and it’s true what they said about it, it really was the greatest deal in gaming history, even if I did already own Half Life 2.

Episode 1 is basically starts right after the end of Half Life 2, you have a brief intervention by G-man where several Vortigaunts appear to save Alyx and also block G-man who is perturbed by the experience, which is interestingly the only time you see him in episode 1, it then cuts to DOG pulling you out of the wreckage with Alyx close by.

A shot from the humorous situation where you and Alex get into a junked car and DOG throws you into the Citadel.

Basically the story revolves around you and Alyx trying to escape theCitadel and City 17 in general, which I quite enjoyed actually, at the start you get reminisce about the end of the previous game seeing some recordings of Dr. Breen and a Combine Advisor as well as an actual Combine Advisor trying to evacuate the Citadel and also encounter the gruesome Stalkers along the way. You end up stopping the Citadel’s core meltdown and have an amusing Razor Train ride before crashing into the sewer systems underneath the Citidel in some awesomely frightening pitch black tunnels where you encounter lots of zombies and the new zombified Combine soldiers who Alyx dubs “Zombines” hah!

The pulsating Citidel Core

After a while you get back to the surface and continue fighting along with other resistance members similar to the Anticitizen One and “Follow Freeman!” chapters in the Half Life 2 story. I love the start of this chapter as it features Dr. Isaac Kleiner who has taken over Dr. Breen’s public broadcast system and reports to everyone that the Suppression Field has been deactivated and basically they should all “give serious thought to doing their part for the revival of the species" in which Alyx remarks that Kleiner is telling them to “get busy”. The ending is one of the coolest scenes where you race to evacuate citizens to a train station then jump on one yourself just in time to see the citadel exploding behind you.

The Citidel exploding as you watch from the train, dang if we were just faster.

 I enjoyed this shorter experience of Half-Life as I enjoyed the areas in the Citadel probably the most from the previous story so this one was pretty damn fun though there was a bit too much use of the Gravity gun, I always like “let’s get out of here” storylines in games and this was a good one. The pace of this story really works and having Alyx with you all the time is pretty cool too as she has infinite bullets and can finish off any annoying enemies such as headcrabs which you couldn’t be bothered wasting ammo or switching to the crowbar for, the episode focuses on story development mostly between you and Alyx and goddamn it’s getting heated but nothing yet. I always wonder how they would pull of a story of the two of you working together without ever explaining why Freeman never talks though they do and do it well even if Alyx is doing all the talking.  As far I could tell the only new enemy were the “Zombines” though you have more contact with the Stalkers as in HL2 you just see them randomly throughout the citadel. You get to see a few new parts of the Citadel and City 17 itself though there are no new characters introduced, my favourite parts are when you encounter the Combine advisors and get assaulted by their physic blasts.

Stalkers preventing Gordon and Alyx from continuing into the Citidel, you never confront them directly just shoot powerballs and roller mines at them.

Controls and base gameplay are basically the same though the graphics have had a small upgrade to the Source engine and a new version of its facial animation/expression technology. I felt that there was relatively few places and things in Episode 1 that made me go WOW! It’s strong point was basically the mostly face-paced story that made you keep on going, the music helped a bit too with its pumping techno and eerie haunts in the darker sections and the sounds were as good as ever. I don’t really have much to say apart from that, there was some general consensus about the game being particularly short but for the price and package I got it in I have absolutely no problem with that, besides this one is just a prelude to what will probably be an awesome 3 part series.

The main menu screen where you can listen to Kleiner giving his freedom speech which is a hoot to listen to.

Of course you probably have all  already played the first and second episodes years ago and are waiting for the third and final conclusion if it ever comes, well we’ll discuss that in my review of the next episode.

JD

Forget saving humanity, first we have to do our part, priorities people.

The Past and times of Yore: Spyro 2, Gateway to Glimmer, more features, more friends and some more good stuff

Release Date: November 5th, 1999
Genre: Platformer
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Insomniac Games
Platform: Playstation
Players: 1
Classification: E (Everyone)

Awhile ago I reviewed the classic Spyro the Dragon, one of my favourite games ever so I decided to continue the aptly named “golden-age” of the Spyro series with Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer (named “Ripto’s” Rage in USA).

Gateway to Glimmer introduced quite a few new features to the game, first off the story introduces many new characters, some of which become a mainstay in the series appearing in several more games. The Professor, Hunter the Cheetah, Elora the Faun, Zoe the Fairy and Moneybags the Bear all make their first appearance as well as one of Spyro’s most notorious opponents Ripto as well as his hench-dinosaurs Crush and Gulp. Basically the story is that the Professor, Elora and Hunter accidentally allow Ripto into their realm of Avalar and Elora prevents him from going back by getting the fairies to spread the orbs all over Avalar. They then decide to get the help of a Dragon to get rid of him. Meanwhile in the Dragon Kingdom it’s raining and Spyro and Sparks decide to go on a holiday to Dragon Shores which is a vacation spot in the Dragon Kingdom but are intercepted by the Professor, Elora, and Hunter and are instead transported to Glimmer, which is the first realm of the game. The focus this time around is basically to defeat Ripto so that Spyro can go to there for a vacation, there’s no actual explanation given about the gems you need to collect this time (apart from needing them to pay Moneybags), I vaguely remember Elora commenting that you had to collect the treasure though the Orbs and Talismans are needed to progress through the game but the treasure is only to achieve %100.

The Professer, Elora, Hunter, Spyro and Sparx  near the portal from the Dragon Kingdom

Playing this game for the first time you can really see the changes, after he and Sparks have a short conversation with the Professor, Elora and Hunter, Elora gives you you’re Guidebook that is used to show your progress in the game. Interestingly the game starts in Glimmer which isn’t a homeworld but a realm, and you don’t actually go to the first homeworld of Summer Forest until you finish the level. You then automatically enter into a conversation with your first npc character Bounsa the Gemcutter who fills you in on what s happening in the realm and what they need help with, and as you progress through the level you meet other NPC’s who have various jobs and dilemmas for you to solve.

Spyro with one of the Gemcutters in Glimmer

They then reward you with Orbs in which they always have a different explanation for giving them as they never have any idea what they are, at the end of the main part of the level you meet a final npc who gives you a Talisman and then you gotta run around and find all the treasure and orbs you need to fully complete the level. Another slight change that you may not notice is that you can activate a map for the bottom left of the screen, but I didn’t bother using this much as the layouts are not really that confusing.

One of my favorite Talismans, the Idol Springs Jade Idol.

 Once you have completed Glimmer and go through the portal you find yourself in Summer Forest which is the first homeworld in which I did notice that it and the rest of the homeworlds no longer have enemies in them just the little creatures to flame, so they are basically safe apart from the ever-present abyss in most Spyro levels. Here is where you find several of the new characters such as Hunter the Cheetah who acts as a guide for various activities and you come across him fairly often throughout the game where he gives you various challenges in reward for Orbs he is also found in the various Speedways where once you have completed the main timed challenge you can find him or another character for another challenge unique to the speedway which include things like flying through rings while paragliding. Another new character (and way of saving your game) is Zoe the Fairy who zaps Sypro with her wand at certain locations throughout a level every time Spyro walks under her to save his game.

Hunter in the crystal cave in Magma Cone, these two orbs you get are one of the harder challenges.

Lastly, Moneybags the Bear is quite a character with his pompous British accent and dress, he charges Spyro lots of gems for services in realms such as extending bridges opening doors and activating portals and also trains you in various abilities which  include:

Swimming: Spyro can now swim on the surface of the water, meaning that not all sections of water are just pools that you drown in, Spyro can swim in almost all bodies of water apart from lava of course. Swimming is pretty fun, you just use the charge button to dive underwater and also charge enemies as you obviously can’t use flame, you can also swim along using the x button, I loved it the first time I did it as it adds a great alternative to the usually gameplay controls and collecting gems, especially when most of the level is underwater.

Climbing: This one’s fairly self-explanatory, there are walls with “ladder-imprints” on them which Spyro can climb and jump across.

Headbash: Spyro can headbash by pressing triangle while jumping and can break most contains inc the “headbash specific” ones.

These abilities are learned by talking to Moneybags and paying a “small” fee, they are learned in each of the three homeworlds. Often you can’t get %100 on some homeworlds and realms until you can get a certain ability where you have to come back to later.

Swimming is great fun, especially wiping out pots and enemies while zooming through the water.

Other then these changes Spyro has relatively the same controls as before, he can jump, glide, charge and is protected by Sparx the same way as before. A new ability is that when you are gliding you can now press triangle for Spyro to hover upwards a bit then fall giving you that last little bit of height needed as opposed to the previous game where if you misjudged the glide there was really nothing you could do but fall, Spyro also loses his L1 and R1 side rolling ability. Defeating enemies this time does not always yield gems but adds a spark to the Powerup gate which when neough enemies are defeated gives Spyo abilities such as superflame, supercharge, superfly, invincibility and spring jump which is pretty damn fun.


Me re-doing a gliding and hovering challenge that Hunter takes you on early in the game, was a cinch the first time too :D

Another feature which I am very glad they added is the “Gem radar”, when you press all shoulder buttons Sparks points to the location of uncollected treasure, man that saves a hell of a lot of time searching around. Spyro now interacts with other characters a lot more, before it was just the one line of Dialogue when you rescued the other Dragons, now you see a Dialogue box pop up when talking to the various different inhabitants of that particular realm which you can talk to for additional dialogue even after they have finished your initial conversation.

A dialogue box that appears in the game.

The realms in the game are fairly diverse in this instance as you go from places like Sunny Beach to Skelos Badlands. There seems to be much more technology around now with realms like Metropolis and Robotica Farms compared to the first game where the worlds were more fantasy/medieval with only a few parts where Gnorcs used electricity or industrial objects like steel and cannons. There are some levels which feature larger amount of water sections such as Aquaria Towers where you help the Seahorses to fill up the towers with water. Spyro also has various new animations where when he touches lava he now jumps in the air with a burnt derriere until he loses Sparx and then gets burnt to a crisp as well as the angry slap he does when he falls into the water while flying in the Speedways which also make a return in this instalment with a bonus feature of you being able to find a character hidden somewhere in the level with a special challenge for Spyro which is always done with Hunter or from Hunter himself.

Aquaria towers is a level where you are under the water almost all the timr.

The graphics in the game are mostly fine, I again used an emulator to play the game so it looks much better than playing with the original Playstation, the locations may look slightly more cartoonish and not as beautiful as the first game. Though there were still some very beautiful locations including: Summer Forest, Magma Cone, and Zephyr which were some of my favourite looking places even Hurricos which is in a constant stormy state of rain, dark clouds and patchy sunlight looked amazing. The design and architecture of the levels is good too, with places like Skelos Badlands.  and Fracture Hills really fitting into their theme with the building design.

Hurricos, one of my favorite looking zones.

The emulator does make the models look so much better with the anti-aliasing options though unfortunately it doesn’t quite work with everything, I could see that the sparks from explosions and the sparkles that Sparx emits (lol that’s fun to say) are basically just yellow pixels. You can also see that any large non-3d text or graphics appear slightly pixelated as well, but these are minor things. The overall look and feel of the game is great and even though the locations in Avalar aren’t quite as equal in beauty as the Dragon Realms they are still a slight step up in detail from the previous game as you’d expect with a new installment.

Who sees some pixelated sparks! and Sparx! lol

 The music in this instalment of the game is great as before, there’s more of a variety of instruments  and sometimes voices which are used prominently at the start of a soundtrack, this is especially the case in Scorch, Shady Oasis and Colossus, I think Colossus has one of the best soundtracks in the game. Although this game retains basically the same kind of music from the original, there are a few gems here and there (pun intended) which are pretty damn good with some of my favourites being, the music from Magma Cone with it’s upbeat action-oriented feel and the calming Summer Forest tone (which is the same for all home realms) are great to listen to and especially come back to after completing a level.


The Colossus level music

The sound effects are good as usual and not much has changed from the usual sound effects and skips and jump and flame breath. Some of the audible cues are back such as the bouncing of an orb somewhere in the level which works the same way as a dragon rattling in crystal. Though the biggest change has got to be Spyro’s change in voice, in the first game he sounded very childish and naive, though since the voice actor change to Tom Kenny he seems to have matured a little bit and has a much more pleasant personality and I must say I liked him much better in the 2^nd and 3^rd games.

Spyro 2 was a great advancement in the Spyro series, it couldn’t obviously be the masterpiece that was the first Spyro game but it did everything it could to improve and it did it well, improving sound, graphics and introducing new game feature and abilities for Spyro. As I mentioned before this was the 2^nd game in the “Golden Age” of the Spyro series on PS1 which culminates with Year of the Dragon. I’ve played this game many times though once you’ve actually finished the game there is little to do, the replayability comes with going through the whole game again and as always I highly recommend playing through the original PS1 sytem, emulator or the Playstation store as it is one of the best games on from the PS1 era.

JD

Story - 9
Gameplay - 10
Graphics - 9
Music - 10
Sound Effects - 9
Play Time - 9
Replayability - 8

Overall: 9

Older, wiser and friendlier.

The Past and Times of Yore: Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, The Original Gangsta of all Trades

Release date: 29/8/2004 (PS2)
Genre: Action-Adventure
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Rockstar North
Platforms: PS2/XBOX 360/PC
Players: 1-2
Online Classification: M (ESRB)

Well well, I can’t really believe I haven’t done a review of this gem, and what a gem, it’s like a giant ruby, like the giant rubies I used to collect on the Forbidden Bridge, actually I’m not thinking straight as looking back now it’s like an old car that was amazing and cool for its time but now looks as unfashionable as baggy pants these days but you still drive it even if people ridicule you for it or in my case still wear the damn pants cause I CAN. Well actually I wasn’t wearing pants when I was playing, and before you all reel back in disgust it’s because I was wearing shorts, yes that’s correct. The reason being was during a particularly warm period in Melbourne’s summer where it was constantly over 40 degrees and I had moved in to my new apartment not so long ago which only had air conditioning in the main room (only fans in the bedroom) so playing on my computer would have been unhealthy for both me and it (goddamn I came home some days and it was 33 degrees in my room alone) When I moved I took the Playstation 1 and 2 consoles that my brother and I had both bought but not the PS3 as my brother played that much more than me, so I only had those to choose from.

Oh yeh, that's how we rolled back then.

 So for my hot weather couch gaming sessions I obviously needed to choose a console and a game, I chose the PS2 as I tried some PS1 games inc Tenchu 2 and Spyro the Dragon but they looked so awful on new TV’s I couldn’t do it. I actually have a Playstation 1 Emulator which I use to play the games as the anti aliasing you can get on them makes them look much better, unfortunately as the Playstation 2’s “Emotion Engine” is quite difficult to emulate PS2 emulator’s don’t work so well, one seemed to work when I tried it though they still look ok on newer TV’s. I needed a game which was long enough to last the period but also be fun in an nostalgic way. So I chose San Andreas as since I’m currently waiting for GTA5 to come out on PC, I needed a GTA fix again, and it would be good to reminisce.

The infamous Grove st cul-de-sac

So back on topic Grand Theft Auto San Andreas was quite a milestone in the GTA history, probably not so much as GTA3 which when it arrived on Playstation 2 in all its 3^rd person 3D glory, but saying that San Andreas was by far the biggest GTA for its time. After the success of GTA3 and then Vice City things just seemed to get better, and bigger, and when the next instalment was announced my brother and I hungrily anticipated what would come next reading over all the details and previews of the game. And when it finally came out it caused nothing less of a stir achieving the best-selling video game of 2004 and selling over 27 million copies as of 2011; it remains the best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time. San Andreas is based primarily around the fictional state of San Andreas (which is actually an earthquake fault line in California) The “state” of San Andreas consists of three metropolitan cities: Los Santos, based on Los Angeles, San Fierro, based on San Francisco; and Las Venturas, based on Las Vegas. 

A fill landscape map of San Andreas, as you can see it's quite large.

 When you boot up the game and hear that excellent soundtrack you know that you are immediately going to be immersed in 90’s gang culture argued by some as to where it was at its peak in the early 90’s and undeniably in LA was where the action was especially with black culture. A few previous GTA games namely Vice City set in the Miami in the Mid 80’s and the older expansion for GTA1 London 1969 were based around parts of the world which had some historical significance around them at the time and San Andreas was no different. I always knew that GTA comes come with a huge amount of references and easter eggs through the game from movies and TV but I had no idea that it had this had so much reference to real-life events such as the rivalry between the Bloods and Crips street gangs, the crack epidemic, the Rampart scandal, and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The different areas are also packed with movie referenced gameplay from Boyz in the Hood to casino Heist films such as Ocean’s Eleven but it could be anything really, in this game you do so much it’s hard to keep up with the story and remember you’re just a two-bit gangsta from the “hood”.

Your sworn enemy the Ballas gang, possibly akin to "The Bloods" of real-life LA

The story this time begins with Carl Johnson (CJ) who is the main protagonist of the game. Carl is a twenty-something black male who is returning to Los Santos to attend the funeral of his mother who has been killed, the opening scenes show him at the airport then being removed from his Taxi by the C.R.A.S.H Officers, Frank Tenpenny, Eddie Pulaski and Jimmy Hernandez who take his money and bag and dump him in enemy gang territory. This is the classic down-on-your-luck-slow-to-get-started kind of opening I like, you start off with nothing and you have to work yourself by starting off slow and everything is easy and simple to start with, too many games these days want you to “hit the ground running” I hated this statement in job descriptions and I hate it when applied to games. It’s happened in a few of the games I’ve played namely Battlefield 3 and most of the Need for Speed series they sort of just throw you into the action where you got this high end car or weapon and most of the time you have to win, it’s supposed to be a sort of “taste of what’s yet to come” and some people like this but frankly I don’t.

Ahh the classic beginning for an RPG, you start with nothing, no money, no weapons, nothing.

 But anyway as with previous GTA games you play as Carl throughout the entire game. The story revolves around the main theme of Carl who is part of the Grove Street Families (GSF) Gang and the C.R.A.S.H officers who were involved with the murder of his mother, their liaison with the Ballas (GSF’s rival gang) and their apparent vendetta against CJ’s brother and Grove Street Families Gang Leader Sean "Sweet" Johnson. The first part of the story plays out in Los Santos and shows how CJ decides to stay in the city and help his brother Sweet and their fellow OG’s Big Smoke and Ryder build their gang back up from the brink of destruction. A first it play out small time with you invading crack dens and shooting up gang members but then gets to some rather cinematic moments like car chases that could have been out of a blockbuster action film. Following the climatic ending to the Los Santos story you get booted out into a hick town in the country which is quite a difference from the cityscapes that you spent almost all your time in the previous GTA games. That’s right San Andreas had a quite large stretch of country woodland (and rocky desert on the Las Venturas part of the map) which was amazing to see in a GTA game, there’s quite literally a dense forest on the map and boy is it fun to hoon around in on a quad bike or buggy. I’m not going to describe in detail the whole storyline but basically CJ starts off in Los Santos then gets exiled to the (presumably LA) countryside then heads to San Fierro where he acquires a garage, then on to the rocky desert where he obtains an airstrip and infiltrates Area 52, he then goes on to Las Venturas where he helps set up a Casino and also helps do a heist on one. He then trots on back to Los Santos to finish things off with some high stakes shenanigans and a showdown with the main villain.

CJ with Smoke, Sweet and Ryder

 So as you’re probably thinking wow you go through 3 cities in the one GTA game this must be huuuuuge, and it is, it may not have been huge to early MMO’s but for an action RPG it was gigantic and you have so many extra real-life activities as well as the story. My brother mentioned at one point back then that his favourite part was in Los Santos at the start as when you get to the country and start robbing country town banks, doing high speed chases on quad bikes and using a flamethrower to destroy evidence of a weed plantation before the cops come it gets pretty silly not to mention what you do in the desert which is even more ridiculous and harder still to identify a young black male from downtown LA to be doing these things.

Now really this is getting kinda silly

But I suppose that doesn’t need to matter cause these things are fun and I had a heap of fun doing them. Controlling CJ hasn’t changed much from previous GTA games, you move around and run and jump using the same buttons as before. The lock on reticle that you used to aim and fire now has various colours to show the health of the enemy, going fright bright green down to red then black for dead. There is however some more advanced combat techniques that you get shown at the start such ducking and rolling to avoid fire and shooting a cars gas tank to blow it up, you can also now move while crouching which is used in a  few missions which require stealth as well as stealth kills with the knife.

The game now includes new lock-on and crouching mechanics

CJ can also climb and swim, bringing some much needed athletics to the GTA characters as it was kind of silly before where you could only do a small jump to get over things, Rockstar themselves said  “We added swimming because we got tired of people saying “why can’t you swim in the game?”” and goddamn rightly so if you ask me.  I mean seriously was that the only reason? It was kind of stupid how you couldn’t swim in the first previous games anyway though I think the real reason was that the water was there to act as a barrier to the other islands while the bridges were either broken or blocked off but in San Andreas you can swim or even take a boat to the other cities regardless of whether you have progressed there or not. They did put in feature though that if you did manage to get to another landmass before you were meant to be there you automatically gained a 5 star wanted level and that of course meant that armoured SUV’s full of FIB (no I didn’t spell that wrong) agents armed with MP5s pull up and shoot you to pieces, I would have thought this would be unnecessary but apparently Rockstar really want people to play the story mode through.

Swimming, underwater too (though there's not much to see) a much needed addition to the series

In addition to climbing and swimming there’s now various stats including Respect, Stamina, Muscle, Fat and Sex Appeal. Stamina is gained over time by running and walking while Fat and Muscle are both raised and lowered by eating and going to the gym respectively, for example if you eat too much you get fat obviously and the more you go to the gym the more muscle you get. The gym has various activities including dumbbells and deadlift for gaining muscle and exercise bike and treadmill for losing fat though fat can also be lost by not eating of course and just simply running around, you can also learn new fighting moves at the various gyms around the city. Respect can be gained permanently by completing missions or temporarily wearing certain clothes while sex appeal can be raised by wearing certain clothes and bulking up.

Yes, he does lift

The customization in the game is greater than ever before, most of the beginning missions teach that the player that they can change CJ’s hair, clothes and tattoos in various shops around the game world. To be perfectly honest though these mechanics were more annoying then useful, my brother and I got a bit annoyed with the constant nagging of the game that “you are getting hungry and need to eat” (or your muscle bar will go down) got pretty annoying especially when you weren’t doing the story mode just mucking around and we were glad that they were removed in GTA 4. Another thing I found quite a waste of time was the Girlfriends mechanic as when I tried dating girls it became more tedious each time, dancing to those annoying rhythm based minigames, going out to restaurants and of course you never saw the sex, well at least you weren’t supposed to. Goddamn it’s seems scarily akin to real life.

Don't do it CJ!

It’s amazing how large this game is, as it includes a hundred things that you can do but forget about inc Pool (8-ball), Arcade games, Basketball and even small things like being able to get cans and snacks from vending machines to replenish your hunger. Once Las Venturas is unlocked the player can also gamble in the casinos as well as gambling on Pool and other things. There are the usual missions from previous games including Vigilante, Paramedic, Taxi and Fire truck missions, you can also go to strip clubs or enjoy service of prostitutes.

Pool is cool, though hard, lost a bit of money to this.

While I won’t go into details some new extra features include:

Pushbikes: There are a variety of bicycles introduced (as wekk as a bike skill) for the first time to a GTA game, these include mountain, BMX and chopper style bikes

Mod Garages:  Los Santos has a Lowrider shop which allows you to customize lowrider cars, San Fierro has a shop called “Transfender” (lol) which is a haven for street racing which is a big feature in the storyline in and leading up to San Fierro and there is at least one auto shop in each city which caters for modifications including NoS and body mods depending on which kind of car you have.

Burglary: Introduced in the storyline and only available at night via accessing a certain black van in each city, you drive around and silently infiltrate houses to steal things like TV’s and Microwaves with a risk to alerting the police.

Import Export: Obtain various vehicles from a  list on the board near a freight ship and load them on with a crane for moneys.

Trucking Missions: Drive a truck and either get to a destination fast, carefully, or avoiding the cops depending on the cargo.

Train Missions: Unlocked in Las Venturas (though you can driver a train anytime) commandeer a train across the whole map again and again for cash, much exciting!

2 Player Co-op: The PS2 and Xbox versions feature a co-op mode, which allowed 2 players to either 'free roam' or go on a 'rampage'. This is limited in a way as both players have to be on screen at the same time but still created some hilarious scenes from my tiem playing with friends, it was quite annoying however that two player could only travel in a vehicle with two doors and two visible seats so you couldn’t both travel in vehicles like buses and passenger planes which was kind of stupid.

Bikes: Another welcome addition to the GTA series

 There are various boards with race meets similar to Vice city which involve all kinds of terrain and vehicles including offroad buggy races and time trials in planes and boats, winning these races is made easier depending on your skill with various vehicles (Bike, Boat, Driving and Flight) and there are 4 schools which have various lessons/challenges to complete and depending on whether you get Bronze, Silver or Gold for all of them gets you up to 3 vehicles spawning outside the school. All I can say is getting all gold is freakin hard especially in the driving school. There is also various events on at the stadiums around the world, from destruction derbys to motorbike "trial" style events.

Wooo Barnstorming!

San Andreas has the biggest list of Weaponry so far, with various types of each slot of weapon, a new feature is weapon skill which when shooting accurately with certain weapons allows you to gain skill with them eventually allowing you to move while aiming, and your lock-on range, accuracy, rate of fire, and strafe speed increase and eventually move while firing. The shooting gallery missions in the Ammunition stores also make a return allowing you to hone your skills there.

And you’re going to be needing skill with weapons as you’re going to be doing a shitload of shooting , most of east Los Santos and some other parts of the map are “gang territory” indicated by coloured overlays in certain areas. CJ’s “Grove Street Families” gang is green and around the area you can see your homies which when enough respect is gained, you can recruit to roll with you. When travelling around enemy gang territory they will obviously be hostile towards you and your homies will be towards them, it’s kinda fun to see them hanging out of the car while shooting and having to move around depending on which way you turn, you do quite a lot of shooting either while driving or being a passenger making the tec-9 and Uzi type weapons important. Gang territory can be won and lost and this is a large part of playing in Los Santos just remember it comes back into play when you get back to the city so don’t try to take over all the damn territories at the start like I did lol.

Gangsta shot

If enemy gangs weren’t enough there is also the ever present 5-0, the Police, like in Vice city thankfully aren’t always out to get you and might occasionally attack enemy gang members depending on who shot first, though most of the time it’s you. The tiers are relatively the same as before with four, five and six stars bringing in SWAT, FBI and the Army respectively.

Cops on bikes! yeeeow!

 Lastly the collectibles bracket includes more than ever before with most unique to each city:

Los Santos Gang Tags: CJ can spray over enemy gang tags with his own.

San Fierro Snapshots: Take photos of unique buildings/locations

Las Venturas Horseshoes: Nothing special here just collect for money.

Oysters: These are scattered underwater throughout the map which CJ has to swim to get to.

"Collectibles" are now kinda fun to do I especially like the spraying over gang tags and collecting oyesters

  Of all the good parts of San Andreas the graphics probably were the most lacklustre, I mean yes there were games that looked better but these graphics are slightly better than Vice City anyway and most people really didn’t care, I certainly didn’t. Most of the people I talked to at the time didn’t even mention the graphics, but reading some of the reviews now at least some people were disappointed. San Andreas at times can look really bad, like intermediate Tafe 3D animation bad and parts of the game can appear very murky, this is often felt at certain times of the day, I noticed that the explosions looked much better at day rather than night as at night there was this sort of neon-effect which gave the fire and explosions this green and blue tinge. You could really sense the hours changing as the game featured very orange sunsets and sunrises and for some reason there seemed to be this glitch that vehicles appeared very dark although it was sunny outside.

A bright day in eastern Los Santos, the cars look ok in this instance.

The world overall most of the time appeared quite bland of course you could argue that’s what it’s supposed to be like as based in gritty gangster neighbourhood LA but technically this doesn’t apply to the rest of Los Santos or San Fierro or Las Venturas for that matter, but hey let’s face it, the PS2 graphics although not spectacular were still better then the blocky polygonal people from the PS1 days and hey it looked and felt heaps better then GTA3. There are still some great scenes in the game, the desert and woodland country looks great and so does the raised flora including tall grass and wheat, the cities and towns although somewhat lacklustre are appropriate, with the right people in the right places, people around the gang territories predominately black or hispanic, people in the country are hillbillies and people in Las Venturas are extravagant, exotic and also Elvis, lots of Elvis.

Landscapes like this were unheard of in previous GTA games

A few people have said that the cars don’t look to detailed enough though I don’t know why, the interiors look more detailed than ever and you don’t even have an in-car view. The annoying Blur effect is still there however and you didn’t get a reprieve of this until GTAIV and I don’t even know whether the console version had the option to turn it off. For the most part the graphics are fine, it’s very hard to judge by today’s standards which are obviously much better than this. Just playing GTA4 I was amazed at the ragdoll physics and level of details that had come about but of course that’s what GTAIV was about, gritty realism, you didn’t go parachuting our of planes in that one oh no, and you can forgive them for giving up some graphical quality for a huge amount of game play in an immense world.

The cars looked fine to me, FOOM!

 The Radio and Music in general are spot on I reckon, it’s got that awesome smooth hip hop intro and all of the music in the sequences and film clips are great too, I especially like how there’s a sort of ‘theme’ for when the CRASH cops come into the screen. The Radio has a good selection of music, there the two appropriate rap channels which play modern and classic rap and hiphop respectively which are a given when you’re riding around the Los Santos Hood  and you also have a host of others inc modern and classic rock stations, party music stations and an excellent country music station that really gets you into the spirit when out in the er country (and desert). There is some excellent voice acting in the game mainly because Rockstar have managed to pull together quite a cast featuring Samuel L Jackson as Officer Tenpenny, Chris Penn as Officer Pulaski and James Woods as Mike Torreno who make some rather convincing villains (or semi-villians). Other voice and Radio DJ personalities include Chuck D, George Clinton, Ice-T, Wil Wheaton, Axl Rose and last but not least: Andy Dick.

From left to right: Samuel L Jackson, Armando Riesco and Chris Penn

 The sound effects are ok, everything is at it should most of the time, though some of the gun sounds are kind of muted and weird like they’re really low quality, but I spose everyone does their gun sounds differently and these sounds just don’t seem right or sound good for that matter and when sound effects don’t sound good that’s a problem. This is made kind of worse by other sound effects which are either not quite right or annoying being played over and over again in certain areas like the odd grinding sound of the minigun and the aircraft jets which make your ears hurt after a while. But apart from this most of the sound effects are ok, there’s some great sounding car engines and some very satisfying crash sounds, especially when you run over people.

Brakka brakka brakka! ironically t tried searching for a movie of the original San Andreas gun sounds but all I could find was videos for mods that chnage them to make them sound more 'realistic' who'd have though?

Summing up, If you haven’t played GTA San Andreas then I highly recommend you do, it can be purchased as a classic game on most stores inc Playstation Network, Xbox Marketplace and Steam store, it remains as one of the most expansive of the GTA games which may actually be overtaken by GTA 5 which I am yet to review I might add as I am waiting for a PC version to be released possibly next month but who knows. San Andreas was the biggest and most feature-rich of all of the GTA games by far when it came out, words can’t really explain how massive it is though looking at the maps for both GTA3 and Vice City I still really can’t see how people can say that one of the cities in San Andreas is as big as Vice City or the Liberty City from GTA3. One of the best things about this game is that you an go absolutely crazy, tear down the highway in a  truck, shoot up a store, hijack a train, steal a  fighter jet then jump out midair, the possibilities are plentiful.  The game is most rewarding to the player who doesn’t rush through the story but takes the time to look around and see what the game has to offer with its hundreds of other features, the replay value is huge and if you can be bothered striving to do everything you will be playing for weeks, even months.

Joyriding in a fighter jet, yep carjacking is for pussies.

 If there was a top ten list for greatest PS2 games Grand Theft Auto San Andreas would definitely be on it. It’s probably in my own top 5 as it’s one of the few PS2 and PS1 games I can go back and play without getting bored and the magic being lost forever, though I will state that as with most GTA games once you’ve finished the main story.  Even if you have already played GTA5 and haven’t played this you still should go back and see what things used to be like where you didn’t have 3 men, you had one, the original gangster of all trades.

JD

Crazy.... Crazy for feeling so lonely

The Past and Times of Yore: Super Mario World, the Greatest

Hello and Happy New Year! I did mean to get this one finished off before New Years but unfortunately it didn't happen but anyway we'll start the new year off with a bang with the greatest game I have ever played. Looking forward to a new year in gaming and I hope you like the new look and colours for the blog.

Release Date: 1/7/1992
Genre: Platformer
Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo EAD
Platforms: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)
Players: 1 or 2 player
Classification: E (Everyone)

Of all the games I’ve reviewed, this one may be one of the most difficult, how do I review my favourite game of all time? Not to mention it’s one of the most popular Mario games ever, It’s like reviewing Pac-man and giving it a score out of 10, but I suppose I must.

Before I owned a console (or a PC for that matter) I, like my other gamers my age in their younger years, cut my teeth at arcade’s playing Pac-man and Space Invaders, and also on those crap little handheld devices with dot matrix screens. Later on I played consoles at friends houses who had  either Sega Master Systems and played Sonic the Hedgehog and other built in games such as Alex Kidd and Golden Axe or they had Nintendo Entertainment systems and played the Mario series obviously and other greats such as New Ghostbusters II and A Boy and his Blob. It wasn’t until my father brought home a Super Nintendo, one of the greatest and most popular consoles ever made, that my gaming career really took off.

The mighty Super Nintendo Entertainment System, PAL aka Europe and Australian version of course.

And the very first game we bought for that console was none other than Super Mario World.

Oh how do I love thee?

Thinking back now I can’t really remember my thoughts about playing it, I guess I just really liked it as I always looked forward to coming home from school and playing. I never owned a NES and had only played a bit of the previous super Mario series but this one, being on the a new console was obviously something else. I still view the crispness of the 2D graphics, the simple controls and the gameplay that was easy to pickup but difficult to master as something of true gaming genius, and have never regarded it as inferior to any game that has come out after it, no matter home good the graphics, gameplay, complexity or replay value are.

BANZAI!, Giant enemies like the Banzai Bill became more common in the Yoshi Island sequel 

So we’ll start with the story. After the Events of Super Mario Brothers 3, Mario, Luigi and Princess Toadstool decide to have a vacation in Dinosaur Land. Which contains Yoshi’s island and the “race” of Yoshi’s (see explanation on previous Yoshi’s Island post here) who have been captured and trapped in enchanted eggs by none other than Bowser, who has returned and is building his Koopa army up again in Dinosaur land and inevitably captures Princess toadstool again and Mario and Luigi have to save her again. Storyline-wise it’s pretty simple but if you’ve played the entire series before this one it’s just another episode in the Mario world and plus you’ve got a whole new world to explore.

And a new world it is indeed, I’ll always remember that starting music where you see Mario standing there with that beautiful background of the dome mountains and the welcome text come up, before you appear on Yoshi’s Island right outside Yoshi’s “house” which is a nice little sub level where you find out that Yoshi is out at the time.

Hey Yoshi there's something I've been meaning to ask you, if this is your house where the hell do you sleep, or live?, in the tree?, on the ground? Forgive me I'm just curious

 I was glad that Nintendo kept the ‘world-map’ format from the last game where you traversed across the screen as a “Mario icon” before entering levels except this time Mario actually appears to walk, turn and spin around while moving across the map. The map is beautiful looking in itself though it lacks the constant movement of SMB3 though it has movement in little areas like fish jumping in the lake and ghosts circling round the ghost houses and it also transition into several sub zones with their own music, like the awesomely named Vanilla Dome and the Forest of Illusion. I also like it how the world changes as you complete things i.e. bridges and hills grow, new paths are made, new geographical elements pop out of the land or sea, it made the map quite an interactive experience. Dinosaur land has a range of environments including grassy plains, wetlands, underground caverns, forests, ghost houses, castles and an Island resembling chocolate.

A full map of Dinosaur Land plus the interior and special areas.

 It’s hard to put into words the impact the graphics had on me just seeing the crispness of the image and the new effects of the Super Nintendo, it certainly had much more of an effect then the NES or any of the older PC games I played before. The graphics were perfect for the game you could see the detailed backgrounds with many layers that later got added to the original Mario series and got upgraded even more with the Yoshi’s island sequel and sometimes they actually move and spin with the level itself, you could see the grass and the dirt and the bushes and trees and those shiny pipes all in great detail. The effect like water splashing and lava flowing look great and at certain times (especially during the castle cutscenes) there are some great animations where sprites fly towards and away from the screen. With the enemies you can see how some of them actually have animated reactions and sometimes appear visibly distressed when jumped on, something that you never saw with the mostly static-faced enemies of the previous games until they got the Mario All-stars reboot. Mario himself looked great with visible eyeballs and more humanlike features, especially in his bigger “super-mario” form and I admit the Yoshi’s look the best in this game. 

Beautiful, it seems so minimal but there's so much detail.

The controls this time around are a bit different seeing as there are two other buttons on the controller this time, the B button is to jump and jumping is still the predominate way to defeat enemies. The X and Y buttons are a composite of Dash/Interact/Special ability and the A button is used to do the new spin jump allowing you to do a number of things which include causing some enemies to disintegrate completely (instead of jumping on them twice), breaking certain blocks and as a way to bounce across enemies you wouldn’t normally be able to jump on. Other controls include being able to scroll the screen using the L/R buttons and Start button to pause as usual. The select button has an interesting new feature that when you have any kind of powerup already and you grab another one, your previous powerup is kept in a blue box at the top of the screen and drops down for you to pickup when either 1. You hit an enemy and lose your current powerup, or 2. You press the select button.

There was some levels, like this one in particular which emphasized breaking blocks with the new spin jump

There powerups in the game include the Super Mushroom, Fire Flower and the new Cape Feather which turns Mario into “Caped” Mario (not Super Mario obviously that’s what the mushroom does) which allows you to fly like superman after taking a running start similar to the Super Leaf in Super Mario Bros. 3 though flying with the cape is a little more complex and it wasn’t till later in life that I realised how to use it properly. With the cape you could spin it around and defeat some enemies you usually couldn’t, you could also spin jump higher and when holding B, use the cape to float down slowly when jumping or spin jumping. Flying with the cape turned out to be quite a complex matter, you could fly up into the top of the map and then zoom down and slam the ground cause a quake killing enemies nearby, though you could also use  the left and right directional buttons to use the cape to float so for example when doing a dive you could pull back and zoom up higher and if you were good enough you could float along for awhile which was actually required for a couple of the secrets in the game. There was this bit on the first level you get the cape which had heaps of coins in a row in the sky and I never figured out how to get them all until I’d played the game through many times. It’s true the different suits have gone missing like the Tanooki Suit, the Frog Suit, the Hammer Suit, and Kuribo's Shoe but their really not needed in my opinion.

Up, up and awaaay!, this was quite an awesome feeling much more so then the Super Leaf in my opinion

Other powerups included the P-Balloon which made Mario expand and allow him to float, the Star which was the usual invincibility and Yoshi's Wings which could only be used when riding Yoshi and flew you up to Coin Heaven and also turned your current Yoshi to a blue (or purple really) Yoshi. New items include the Dragon Coins where you collect 5 in a level to earn and extra life, Key and Keyhole which lead to an unlockable alternate area and the rare 3-Up Moon which does exactly what it says. The P-Switches also make a comeback with a grey variety that turns enemies into Silver Coins and goddamned did it take me awhile to realise that some of the timed ones that leave a trail of coins are actually able to manipulated by the player as to which direction they go.

The new dragon coin

Having played the game through again recently, I thought to myself that I really never came that close to how good I used to be at this, playing it on emulator now with a PS2 style controller also was a slightly different feel and I had to fight off the urge to use the ‘save anywhere anytime’ feature that emulators have before difficult sections or boss fights. As with all Mario games you quickly get a knack for the gameplay and pretty soon you’re jumping and flying and riding along with ease. Speaking of pace, the pace of the game is great, with the exception of the levels that automatically move the camera and you have to keep up, you can run and jump along at your own pace (though there is a time limit) and even run back through the level to finish something off or chase after a powerup. I never really liked the Sonic the Hedgehog games, sure it may have been cooler and faster, but I’m the type of person who likes to explore a level, and barrelling at top speed around a ramp and then crashing into some horizontal facing spikes is not my idea of a good time.

V for Victory!

The game can be player either 1 or two player with the 2^nd player playing as Luigi and the two players taking turns. All the usual Mario mechanics are in there, hitting question mark blocks, getting coins, getting points, the end goal this time is an actual goal which is often guarded by an interesting new enemy called Chargin’ Chuck who resembles an NFL player, the Giant Gate that acts as the end goal has a beam moving up and down and depending on how high Mario hits the beam he gets a certain number of points and after reaching 100 points he gets to go to a bonus game to gain some free lives, some bonus levels are also hidden throughout other maps. I remember in my childhood finishing a level and giving the V for victory sign with my hand at the same time that Mario did.

A  Chargin' Chuck near the Giant Gate

As we all know, this was the first Super Mario game to include Yoshi who (after taking a brief visit to his house) is found trapped inside an egg in one of the first levels of the game, he explains to Mario and Luigi that he and many other Yoshio’s are trapped inside eggs throughout Dinosaur land some of which are held by Bowser’s children aka the Koopalings in their castles. Riding Yoshi was great fun I especially liked the bongoes that got added to the music when you were riding him. Yoshi could eat almost any type of enemy as well as explode them when he jumped on them, he could also eat the berries which were hanging in various levels which I’ve only just found out actually did something. You could fly with Yoshi if you had a cape albeit just up and down and he is able to hop across surfaces or enemies that Mario cannot such as Spinies he also had that special Yoshi's Wings powerup.

Yoshi launches a shell at the enemies inside the Forest of Illusion level

There are other colours of Yoshi’s that you could get such as:

Red Yoshi, a Yoshi that spits out all Shells in the form of three fireballs. It loses any Shell Power by spitting the shell due to all shells being used for fireballs and thus being unable to be recaught.

Blue Yoshi, a Yoshi that flies as long as a Shell is in its mouth. 

Yellow Yoshi, a Yoshi that can shake the ground by taking a Shell into its mouth, defeating enemies with its impact.

These Yoshi’s are obtained usually through the Star World which I’ll get into later with the exception of Blue Yoshi who you also receive when using a Yoshi's Wings powerup. If Mario is hit while riding Yoshi, Yoshi will run away but Mario can run and jump back on before he runs into a bottomless pit or whatnot.

Mario with Purple (Blue) Yoshi in a night version of coin heaven

If there was ever a game where I enjoyed almost every bit of music and sound effect from then Super Mario World would come quite close. The sound of Mario jumping, the sound Yoshi makes when he breaks out of the shell and when he shoots out his tongue, the awesome sound when you get your first Cape Feather and the very satisfying sound of a castle, fortress or switch palace going under. The sound effects make Super Mario games what they are and this one was no exception, it’s kind of hard to describe but everything just works, the sounds are much smoother then Mario Bros 3 (yes even the All-stars remake) and make for a better feel overall.

Boing!

The music in the game in none other than exception, from the very moment the circular transition opens and you hear that magnificent intro music well I can’t think of anything better. I also love the tune that plays when you start the game but basically every bit of music is amazing, even in the overworld map which has different tunes for different areas, the homely juvenile tune of Yoshi’s island, the plain and simple overworld tune, the cool drum beat of the Vanilla dome and gentle violin of the forest of illusion. I like the way the music changes with the level for example normal level have happy slower tunes while athletic moving screen and jump levels have a faster ragtime beat. The caves, Castles and Ghost houses are equally good, the caves with their quiet solemn beat and the castles and fortresses with their haunting music have one of the best soundtracks in the game. The music in Super Mario world is a large part of what makes it the best game I’ve ever played so hats off to you Mr Koji Kondo

The castles had one of the best (if not the best) soundtracks in the game. Here Mario is climbing on a fence and could also punch koopas off, something we'd never seen before.

One of the things I liked most about Super Mario World was the secrets, there were heaps of them, every level had a little secret of some kind, the many pipes in the world still led to secret areas inc the bonus 1up areas. Many of the levels had a key and a keyhole and led to alternate paths and secret levels, the cape feather was most often the catalyst of this as many secret were in areas above the level  either in the sky or on the roof of the cave. The Star World where the baby coloured Yoshi’s are found requires you to reach the various star roads where Mario does this amusing spin and flies off into the sky (damn it took awhile to find a path to the last one). The levels of the star world to find the key and keyhole to get to the next area and I won’t spoil anything else in the rare case that you haven’t played it. 

It took me quite a while to work out all the secrets that I’ve currently found and no matter how many times I finish the damn thing the highest I’ve gotten is 97%, something about getting all the level exits and I didn’t even get that far. Until a couple of years ago when I was playing on emulator and finally found the Soda lake secret area which had the Torpedo Teds which I saw in the ending credits but never knew where the hell they were for years until I finally couldn’t take it anymore and had to look it up and there was a few other things I had to look up too but I guess that’s why games used to have strategy guides.

The Soda Lake secret level with the Topedo Teds

I can’t say much more about Super Mario World other than that it was the game that shot my gaming career into life, and I’m definitely not alone in my praise, you look at the reviews on Gamefaqs and there’s barely a score below 9 (out of 10 of course) Shigeru Miyamoto himself has often stated that Super Mario World is his favourite Mario game and needless to say I fully agree. There’s not many games I experience anymore that come close to what Super Mario World did for me, I remember even thinking about it while in class at Primary school but I guess I did that for a lot of things.

It's nice to get a thank-you

This game was the epitome of the Mario games on the Super Nintendo (along with Yoshi’s Island) and I have never and will never care about any Mario game that was made after the SNES as much as I did the original series and Super Mario World has always been and is still my favourite game in this world.

JD

Others come close, but never conquer.